For most skiers, there is a touch of mystery preceding every ski season. The perennial ‘where to ski?’ question evokes the Internet sleuth in all skiers. Research and scouting is as much a part of the ski trip as the gear, the lodging and the weather watching.
It’s all part and parcel to the skiing experience. It’s something that beginners, experts and all those in between can enjoy with the same zeal.
Skiing gives us a way to embrace winter, a season derided by those who haven’t found their way to a silent stand of powder in the trees, a groomed cross-country trail in the woods, or that perfect game of pond hockey.
Those who have made it here to read this, however, know winter’s charms. Ski trips, we all know, are the best trips. But, again, where to go skiing?
This piece and this list will help skiers find answers to that question that has dogged the world since the dawn of the chairlift.
Further down, readers will find our top 10 North American ski resorts ranked for 2018. For the a complete ranking of more than 200 ski resorts in North America, skiers should consult ski trip booking site ZRankings, which crunches the numbers behind this list.
Parents: see the family ski resorts rankings.
Ski geeks: see ZRanking’s ski resort snow rankings.
Texans may want to check out our special list for skiers traveling from Texas.
As those who have read past versions of this list know, we rank ski resorts using an exacting measurement known as the Pure Awesomeness Factor.
PAF scores are the product of an algorithm that has been continually honed for nearly a decade. The inputs to that algorithm include a ski resort’s terrain, snow profile (quantity, quality, dependability), town ambience, ease of travel, lodging base, acreage, continuous vertical, plus the personal experiences of the ZRankings crew stationed out on the snow across the continent.
Heed the PAF. It guides all skiers toward enlightenment.
As always, our perspective on snow is helped along by input from Bestsnow.net’s Tony Crocker, who, unequivocally, knows more about snowfall at ski resorts in North America than any other person alive today.
Before diving into the rankings, we’d be remiss if we didn’t comment on last ski season, and the wild offseason that comprised the spring and summer of 2017. Oh - and if you're looking for gear, here's Forbes' top pieces for Winter 2018.
Busy offseason, changes for skiers coming in 2019
As off-seasons go in the ski industry, this past summer’s was one of the more consequential. Just as the ski world had grown used to a single dominant company—Vail Resorts—whose reach seemed to expand with every year, there are now two of these companies.
A yet-to-be named company, fueled with cash coming from two entities—KSL Capital, a private equity company out of Denver, and the Crown family of Chicago, which controls Aspen Skiing Co.—made several purchases in an effort to form a rival to Vail. Its first was to buy Intrawest’s catalogue of ski resorts that included Winter Park, Steamboat, Mont Tremblant and others. After that, the company closed on Mammoth Mountain, California’s stalwart, along with Deer Valley and a smattering of smaller resorts that came along with those acquisitions.
The result is a resort colossus that doesn’t quite measure up to Vail, which earlier this year bought Stowe, but is in the same weight class.
Although Aspen’s four mountains are not part of the new company, it is expected that they will participate in a new umbrella ski pass for 2018-2018 that will compete with Vail’s Epic pass. It’s not yet known—probably by anybody—if Aspen will remain in the Mountain Collective, which to this point has been the main market counterweight to the Epic Pass.
This could be a win for skiers overall, but the development will likely continue a trend that has made things harder (more expensive) on skiers who take one big trip a year. The new resort company is following the blueprint created by Vail Resorts, which sold 600,000 Epic passes last year, which steers skiers toward buying a multi-mountain pass rather than single-day lift tickets, which are now approaching $200 at marquee Vail mountains. That works well for people and families taking multiple trips, but it can be hard to make the math work with a single trip of four to five days of skiing.
Last season – big snow totals in California, Wyoming
California does as only California can. The ski resorts of the Sierra continued to bolster their already-large standard deviations when it comes annual snowfall with a monster season that comes just a couple of years after a string of drought winters that left many major resorts closing early. Mammoth Mountain had to close lifts on more than one occasion because of the odd and wonderful problem of having too much snow.
Colorado’s season started off quickly, with a banner January that kept the slopes well clad in snow all the way through spring break into April.
Utah got its mojo back, with a big season all around. Skiers who happened to be around for Park City’s Sundance Film Festival—a great time to ski, as nobody is on the slopes—found themselves buried in 40 inches or so across a week.
Jackson Hole notched another good snow year, and it is showing itself to be a good outlet for dependable snow for the holidays.
The preamble has ended. Those who have read previous years’ versions of this list know what follows. It’s the product of going to places, skiing them and reporting back. It’s a simple formula that yields what we believe to be exquisite results.
These are the top 10 ski resorts in North America for 2018:
1. Jackson Hole – PAF: 99.0
The stalwart of our rankings holds the vanguard position once again. Jackson can’t be denied, not after a banner winter that dumped 593 inches of snow, with a peak snow depth that reached 158 inches on the mountain, a record.
In addition to the fortuitous run of storms last season, the resort managed to improve on itself in a major way, opening the Sweetwater Gondola, which grabs skiers at the base, ferrying them up toward the tenderloin of Jackson’s intermediate terrain, most of which centers on the Casper Restaurant.
The new gondola greatly relieves what could be a pressure point on busy days in Jackson, when lines for the Tram and the Bridger Gondola could grow to the point of looking rather onerous. The new lift has absolved these troubles, and it keeps many skiers who prefer mellower blue runs off of Sundance, a trickier blue run that was previously the most popular route for those debarking from the top of Bridger Gondola to get to the Casper area.
The resort plans to build more infrastructure around the new gondola, including new installations for ski school and beginners further up the mountain, at the gondola’s mid-station, which will free beginners from being tethered to the absolute bottom of the resort. Those facilities will open during the winter of 2018-2019.
As great as all this building and self-improvement has been, along with the bumper crop of storms, the resorts still retains its most valuable asset: its steep countenance of terrain, etched into the Tetons in a way that exhorts skiers to point their skis down, and to be quick about it.
Jackson is a place that, more than any other in the United States, lets skiers barrel down the mountain without a care of running out of room. By the time a skier has reached the bottom of Jackson’s 4,139 feet of eminently continuous vertical, she is quite ready to step through the doors of one of its red tram cars, if just for a quick respite, to ride all the way to the top once again.
It doesn’t take long before the tram is passing the notch in the rock that forms Corbet’s Colouir, its north-facing snow almost always in the shadows, staying chalky for those who brave its keyhole entrance, the difficulty of which greatly varies with the year, the snowpack and the direction of the wind the night before. For those doubting the softness of the crux, it’s never unwise to listen to somebody else’s skis pass over it first—if a candidate can actually be found among the gapers bunched at the top of the run.
Those who skip this famous test will have plenty of other chances to find personal glory, from the wide shots in Herbie’s Bowl to the well-spaced trees of Washakie Glade off of the Teton Lift.
Jackson is a place that seems a bit wilder than other mainline resorts. But have no doubt that this is a playground for all kinds. Jackson inhabits a quirky niche where billionaire luxury—the ranches here are worth hundreds of millions, and there is a Four Seasons installed at the base—crosses with a crusty local skier culture that can only take root in a place where the terrain and snow prove so fertile.
Many places have one, but not the other. Jackson in a curious way that is all its own, has both. And that is why we love it.
Where to stay: Skiers can never go wrong at Hotel Terra—a 100-foot walk from the Mangy Moose (key information, this).
Where to eat: Persephone Bakery is good for a shot of espresso and some pie. Eat it.
Where to shop: Based in Jackson, Stio is a outwear brand that has been clawing its way up through the competitive world of shells and down fill. Browse its superb lineup at its flagship store in town.
2. Alta – PAF: 96.87
Alta is at once a time machine and a utopia that evokes what skiing was, and what it always should be. A quick look around at Alta tells skiers—there are no snowboarders here—that this place is different. Snow cakes everything here, from the road signs to the vertical rock faces.
Alta is one of the few ski resorts in order to America that feels decidedly like the Alps, but with far more snow. There’s a rawness to the experience at Alta that, along with its best-in-the-world snow conditions, make it a unique destination for skiers.
What sets out apart everywhere, and what keeps it toward the top of this list year after year, is snow. Let this be clear: Alta gets more high quality snow than anywhere else—an average of 521 inches per year, with 51% of its months averaging more than 90”, an absurdly good ratio.
Yes, there are winters when Mount Baker or even spots in the Sierra get more snow, but the snow isn’t the same quality of stuff that falls at Alta., which gets the dry Rocky-variety snow that often eludes the coastal ranges of the West. In addition, Alta’s snow, and Utah’s snow in general, comes with a high degree of consistency.
The standard deviation of the mean snow year at Alta is quite low, whereas the standard deviations—and hence the threat of a real drought—is far higher at ski resorts with big average snowfall numbers in the Sierra and Pacific Northwest.
Consider that only 2% of winter months bring less than 30 inches of snow to Alta, compared with 25% at Squaw Valley.
Quite simply, Alta—properly pronounced ehl-tah, rather than ahll-tah, is the best place to ski for those who are focused on that one seminal factor: snow.
But Alta wins elsewhere, too. Skiers should count themselves lucky that the excellence of Alta’s snow is nearly matched by its terrain. Tree shots, bowls, and hidden lines pepper Alta’s acreage. To learn of all this ski resort’s gems is a decades-long endeavor.
For the intrepid, there is almost always a steep line of cold powder snow to be found somewhere at Alta. It might take a lot of sidestepping and a shimmy or two over some exposed scree, but good skiing—interesting skiing—and legitimate steep skiing can always be found at Alta.
Where to eat: Get the bison ribeye at Shallow Shaft Restaurant.
Where to stay: Alta’s Rustler Lodge has a location that, for skiers, is superior to all others in North America.
3. Snowbird – PAF: 96.72
Anybody who has been to Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon realizes that Alta and Snowbird are close cousins, or perhaps even siblings of a sort. They are the only two ski resorts that benefit from the greatest snow trap in North America, and they share a snowbound ambience that’s unique to this curious crack of Wasatch topography.
Solitude and Brighton, which inhabit Big Cottonwood Canyon just over the ridge, come close, but it’s the southern canyon that not only tends to capture more snow, but has longer and steeper fall lines as well.
There are differences and unique strengths held by both Alta and Snowbird when compared with each other. Alta gets more snow by 10-15% over the course of a winter. Being closer to the end of the canyon seems to give Alta a better last squeeze on storms before they pass over to the lee side of the Wasatch, where Park City and Deer Valley are. Alta is more modest in its snow reporting, however, which is something to keep in mind when looking at the numbers posted by each resort.
Snowbird, of course, still has the best snow in the world outside of Alta. And Snowbird enjoys other advantages. It’s taller than Alta, with 3,240 feet of continuous, steep vertical drop that’s all serviced by one lift, the tram, which gives skiers the best one-ride slice of terrain outside of Jackson Hole.
The steepness and terrain at Snowbird is relentless. There is good stuff, great stuff, everywhere.
Some of our favorite lines are right off the Cirque at the top, and further to skier’s right, in a chute that cannot be named here.
Snowbird is also home to our favorite on-mountain hotel in all of North American Skiing. Some people do note care for the reinforced concrete architecture of Snowbird’s Cliff Lodge, which anchors the base of the resort. Such feelings, however, are ill informed. The Cliff is a prime example of the nuanced force that architecture can be in our lives.
The hotel’s muscular edifice of poured stone and glass forms a striking, but not out-of-palace contrast to the sheer wall of rock, snow and trees behind it. And with its newly completed renovation, let there be no doubt that Snowbird’s Cliff Lodge stands in the pantheon of elite ski hotels in the world.
Even for those not staying at the Cliff, making the early tram is possible with some planning and a 20-oz coffee. It is always worth it.
Operating from the backside of the mountain in Mineral Basin is Snowbird’s own cat skiing program, which explores rarely-skied nooks of the Wasatch beginning with terrain to the skier’s right of the in-bounds runs in the Basin. For those who can spring for it, big powder stashes await.
Where to eat: The Summit is a must visit for all skiers and eaters.
Where to stay: There can be no other Cliff Lodge.
4. Vail – PAF: 92.34
The lynchpin and namesake of the largest force in skiing, Vail serves as a catchall for ski trips that include skiers of all levels. It is, to many, the quintessential ski resort, and it’s a role that the resort and town, which have always been indistinguishable from each other, play well. The mountain itself, the place where canny skiers can still go find some room for themselves in the woods, holds up well to the scrutiny that so many skiers bring to it.
Vail continues to be the anchor destination ski resort in the state of Colorado—Breckenridge gets more skier days, but Vail lures more people from out of state. For that reason, the lodging, dining and apres at Vail is a notch above that of Breck, and the skiing is, too.
As Vail has pushed industry consolidation forward, it has also poured money into its mountains, continuing to improve skiers’ experiences. This last off-season at Vail mountain was no exception. As Vail is replacing the Northwoods Express lift, No. 11, with a new high-speed six-pack that will alleviate some of the crowding that can take place at the bottom of that lift on busier days.
Vail has furnished its reputation with than ever-expanding lodging inventory at its base and the village that has taken strives for becoming and actual place not just some conjuring of a place by resort executives. It’s the lodging that most people talk about when they come back from Vail. The Arabelle, the Benjamin, the Ritz.
This happens so often that the real story at Vail—the skiing— is often lost in all of the flutter and pump of the lodging. But this ski resort whose name has become synonymous with skiing was put in this place for a very good reason, and it had nothing to do with the village or hotel rooms.
It had far more to do with one of the better snow profiles in all of Colorado—14.1% of days bring more than six inches of snow, and 18.9% of months bring bomber loads of more than 90 inches. In addition to the snow, Vail has terrain that is long, well-pitched and at a steep enough angle to satisfy experts without scaring away intermediates. Put simply, Vail is an excellent place for skiers to ski.
It’s one of the few places that usually has good conditions during the early, middle and late season. As you can see from the Vail snow graph at ZRankings, it’s a place that gets things open early—Vail averages 83% open at Christmas—and tends to hold its snow well late, thanks to its terrain, 40% of which faces north.
Vail skiers benefit from the option to leverage the most versatile season pass in skiing for those looking to ski more than a couple of days on a couple of trips. For $859, the Epic Pass delivers a bottomless supply of access to an array of flagship mountains, including Vail, Beaver Creek, Whistler, Park City, Heavenly and Breckenridge.
For families planning a big holiday ski trip, with another ski trip at spring break, the Epic Pass is a wonderful—and economical—option, considering the daily rate at some Vail-owned resorts touched $189 last year. During the peak season, skiers can break even on the pass after just five days on the hill.
Vail continues to make it easier to get around its 5,289 acres. With the new North Face lift, skiers should notice improvements in flow on Vail’s front side this winter. More interesting is that Vail is set to release a feature in its Epic mobile application that will display live wait times at lifts all across the mountain, letting skiers be strategic when planning where to ski next—a quintessential question for all of those days on the hill.
Where to eat: Mountain Standard – go with the Cast Iron King Salon with Korean chili.
Where to stay: Hotel Talisa is a West Vail property that gives skiers direct access to the snow in a quieter corner of the resort.
5. Telluride – PAF: 90.21
Telluride is quickly becoming the only ski town known better for its summers than for its winters. With music festival lineups that rival Lollapalooza, Telluride has become a magnet for intrepid tourists during the warmer months.
The winters, however, remain sublime.
Telluride sits in a canyon within Colorado’s San Juan Range, in the southwest quadrant of Colorado, the most serrated and forbidding stretch of mountain in the state most known for them. The vistas are punctuated with 14,000-foot peaks that look every bit the part of unattainable mountain ascents.
They’re attainable, of course, but the point is that the mountains here come with a look that is scary and savage, more Mont Blanc and less Pike’s Peak.
Town is set in a boxed canyon that is striped with ice and snow up runs of red rock that go nearly vertical for thousands of feet.
The skiing, it should be noted, is good.
Telluride does not receive snow at the same rate as Jackson Hole or most mountains in Utah, but it tends to hold on to the snow that it gets. Snow preservation is helped by altitude. This is a high resort; Mountain Village, where much of the lodging base is, sits at 9,500 feet. Palmyra Peak, which is in-bounds at Telluride but requires a serious hike to reach, tops out at 13,470 feet (the hike doesn’t quite get to the peak, but a saddle that’s just short).
In addition to its elevation, Telluride also has large swaths of north-facing terrain. This elevation-terrain combination makes Telluride a veritable refrigerator that preserves snow at a high rate. Ski trips in February, as well as ski trips for March spring breaks are excellent bets at Telluride.
The skiing at Telluride can be as hard or easy as one wants it to be. Beginners and intermediates will find plenty of agreeable terrain around Mountain Village and mid-mountain, where the terrain is gentler. For experts, Telluride has some of the best in-bounds terrain in Colorado. That includes one of the most exhilarating in-bounds boot-packs in North America, the aforementioned hoof up to Palmyra Peak.
From the top of Chair 12, it will take determined visitors 60 minutes to 90 minutes of going up. Some stretches of the hike can be intense—and may involve having both feet and hands working the ground (rock, snow, ice). The payoff is worth it, though. For accomplished expert skiers, the chute from the top is steep and narrow, but conditions tend to be good, as the chute is north-facing and, of course, it starts above 13,000 feet.
The charms of Telluride’s ski terrain are matched by the allure of town, which is among the alpha set in our book when it comes to North American ski hamlets. Colorado Avenue is lined with great eateries and several dive-ish bars worth a pint or two of most skiers’ time.
Food-wise, great options abound. A local favorite that has exploded into a tourist-drawing hit is Brown Dog pizza, whose bready Michigan-style pizzas (it’s a thing) have people waiting two to three hours for a seat. For a scene less crushed, we enjoy Taco Del Gnar, a city-worthy taco joint just a couple of hundred feet from the base of the gondola.
Where to eat: We just told you—Taco Del Gnar.
Where to stay: Auberge Residences at Element 52 – complete with on slope access via its own funicular.
6. Whistler-Blackcomb – PAF: 89.14
There exists a curious number of avid and enthusiastic skiers who take a big ski vacation every year, but they only go to one place, the same place, every year, which happens to be at the edge of the continent, north of the U.S. border. They have sworn loyalty to one ski resort and one ski resort alone—that fortress of the north, the citadel of British Columbia’s coastal range: Whistler Blackcomb.
Why do these people return to the same place, year after year, some of them decade after decade—many of them without skiing anywhere else during the rest of the season?
It’s because Whistler offers a singular experience. Its coastal range location in British Columbia is unlike any other major mountain resort on the continent. As most skiing stat nerds know, the skiing here comes in a special order size: big and tall.
The vertical drop, continuous, is 5,354 feet, topping more than a mile. The only mountain with more vertical in North America is Revelstoke. Beyond the vertical credentials, the twin peaks of Whistler and Blackcomb together offer skiers 8,171 acres of terrain, the most on the continent.
Skiers can find a lot of good-to-awesome in that acreage, starting toward the top of Whistler, where well-pitched bowls, pillowed boulders and snow-cloaked trees beckon skiers to take risks, to be adventurous.
For those aren’t looking for activity that risks run-ins with tree wells and large rocks, Whistler has perhaps the most extensive inventory of blue terrain in North America, with sweeping groomers that twist around the tall mountains, making the runs go on for minutes upon minutes, searing the experience into skiers’ quads in a way that mountains elsewhere can’t.
Another quite interesting twist to a Whistler ski vacation, at least for American skiers at the moment, is the advantageous exchange rate that gives those converting American dollars into Canadian Loonies a hefty advantage—which helps make the pricey affairs that are ski vacations a fair bit cheaper.
This is the second winter in a row with such an unbalanced situation, one that could hew back toward equilibrium at some point, so it’s as good a time as any to head north of the border for snow, tall mountains and Molson.
When skiers arrive in Whistler Village, they are greeted by one of the more wondrous resort village creations in the world. The streets here course with people and cultures from across the globe. The Australians love it here; the British, who are a curiously large force in the ski world, much like Texans, love it here, too. And Whistler is a natural destination for visitors to Vancouver, a spectacular global city that has a magnetic pull across the entire Pacific.
With so much culture and variety, it would be expected that the food in Whistler would be good. It is. And it comes in any form or variation of flavor that one seeks.
After dinner, skiers will find more distractions in Whistler than any other ski town, including Aspen. This is a place where the clubs resemble those of a big city. In fact, in this way, Whistler is far more similar to its ilk in Europe than other ski resorts across North America. Anybody who has been to the Austrian Alps can attest to the intensity with which the skiers there take to après adventures long after the last chair has turned.
For 20-somethings and those who may be more interested in revelry than skiing—not that the two are exclusive—Whistler is often the perfect fit.
Where to eat: Crush some lobster bisque at The Rimrock Cafe.
Where to stay: The Fairmont, the alpha chain of Canada, does not fall short here, as its Fairmont Chateau Whistler holds up the name.
7. Aspen Snowmass – PAF: 87.54
If there were a place that owned the Encyclopedia entry for ski town, it would likely be Aspen. Encyclopedias as we once knew them have given way to search engines in the random answers produced by the web, but Aspen remains the most alpha of ski towns. This is something we can say declaratively.
Among its elite traits is an airport that drops skiers into the heart of the beast from the get-go. Upon landing, skiers can’t quite literally walk to the slopes in a matter of minutes. With flights coming in daily from most major metros in the United States, many people can execute a trip with a ski more days then they spend nights in Aspen. This is the holy grail of the quick hitter ski trip.
This skiing is dependably good, particularly later in the season. There’s also a great deal of options and acreage here, as Aspen is comprised buy four separate ski mountains, each with its own strengths.
Our particular favorite is Aspen Highlands, where the crowds tend to be sparser and the fall lines true, with good stores of snow for those who don’t mind poking around the trees and putting in some time in the boot-pack line. There’s a touch of Alta and Jackson Hole at Highlands, which is a decidedly good thing.
Nearly equally as interesting is the grand old lady herself, Aspen Mountain. The apron of snow at the bottom of the mountain spills out into some of the most exclusive shops and real estate in the world. Up above that apron, however, skiers can find unvarnished pockets of gritty Colorado glade and bump skiing. Many of the skiers at Aspen Mountain like to stick to the groomed track, do a few laps and call it a day, with an afternoon reserved at the spa. That leaves room for the intrepid to do some serious powder mining in plain sight of some of the main runs.
By dipping into trees that may look impenetrable at the top, skiers can find four to five turns of good untouched snow at a time, often more than a week since the last storm. There are many serious skiers in Aspen, but sometimes locals have it so good, they don’t bother with what are choice pieces of untracked for anybody else.
That holds true at many western ski resorts, in fact. In that same spirit, visitors can always do well by skiing the storm, as the locals will often wait for the following day, when the weather has cleared.
Snowmass is the big log upon which the whole resort complex of Aspen is built. It’s huge, it has everything, and it exerts a force of gravity all its own, setting it apart from Ajax, Highlands and Buttermilk.
Snowmass also outperforms the others when it comes to snow, capturing more overall, and storing it very efficiently with a peak elevation of 12,510 feet and an outsized chunk of its terrain—60%—facing north.
As for the town of Aspen, its high-end reputation is well deserved. Skiers can eat as if they are in New York or Chicago. Hamilton isn’t here yet, but there’s no doubt the idea has been floated.
They’re still exists some local everyman flavor in Aspen, visitors just have to dig a little harder to find it. Skiers will find a little bit of this in the fried chicken sandwich at White House Tavern. Although, it should be noted: this place is not a dive.
Aspen for the holidays will always be one of the classic ski trips—the kind of affair that evokes Dale of Norway sweaters and even Little Nell himself. It’s a fine place—a superior place, even, for skiing families, as Buttermilk is one of the best ski mountains for beginners in all of North America.
Where to Stay: We’re fond of The Gant, right in town.
Where to Eat: The aforementioned White House Tavern, of course.
8. Park City – PAF: 87.44
A ski resort that sits on top of one of the elite towns of skiing with a swath of 7,300 acres of terrain is impossible to ignore. Park city has a set up that makes it unique in the world of North American skiing:
- It’s an easy 35 minute drive from a major international hub airport
- Its slopes spill into a town that, lodging wise, may have the widest and deepest breadth of properties in skiing
- Its vast terrain contains large envelopes for all levels of skier
Since Vail Resorts managed to get control of, and merge, Canyons and Park City, the resort has been on a tear of capital improvements that, almost every season, make it one of the most interesting ski resorts to visit (more than once). This will be the third season in which skiers will be able to traverse the east side of the Wasatch from Park City all the way to what was the northern edge of Canyons.
It’s a long strip of terrain on its own: nearly seven miles north to south. There are interesting chunks of terrain the whole length, some that are in plain view, and some that require some exploring to find.
Intermediates will quickly find that Park City is a ski resort that excels in serving this cross-section of the skiing community. There are miles of wide groomers buttressed with tall stands of aspen and pine, punctuated in some spots by old mining buildings and relics. There are good amounts of blue terrain both on the town side of the ski resort—the south—and the northern reaches of the resort, the old Canyons end.
Some of our favorite spots peel off of the Tombstone and Super Condor lifts on the Canyons side of things.
For experts, there are some treasures on both ends of the resort. The most challenging runs are not only where skiers expect them—off of the Jupiter and Ninety Nine Ninety lifts, but also peppered into north-facing tree sheltered cracks in the woods all around the resort. There are many of these great kinds of shots on the Canyons side, which tends to be the more poorly prospected—read: less people—and therefore the best bet for powder seekers.
Hidden shots in the woods stripe the northernmost sections of the resort. What look like impenetrable phalanxes of north-facing conifers toward the top of peaks can open up into glorious runs of comfortable powder below. This is one of our favorite sections of the Wasatch to pillage.
Where to eat: We cannot possibly steer skiers away from a veggie and sausage pizza at Davanza’s, a local favorite near the town lift. Eat it on the porch with a big can of something.
Where to stay: Hotel Park City is an immaculate property in which the smallest rooms are fit for six people (don’t tell them we sent you).
9. Beaver Creek – PAF: 87.34
The thing about Beaver Creek that may not be apparent for those who haven’t visited: it’s an experts’ mountain cloaked in luxury and chocolate chip cookies (good ones).
There are no steeps here that rival those of Jackson Hole or Crested Butte, but there are lots of long, straight fall lines that reward those who have trained before the winter. At the same time, Beaver Creek is one of the better major ski resorts for beginners in all of North America.
This strengths at Beaver Creek for beginners start at the bottom of the mountain where the ski resort has a wide apron of perfectly mild green terrain far to skier’s right. They’re even exists a gondola that exclusively serves this area, dubbed the Buckaroo Express.
If that’s not enough, there is perhaps the most luxurious magic carpet lift in Colorado in the same area of the mountain. A Plexiglass tunnel covers the conveyor, which not only traps heat and keeps things toasty for the ride up, but it also completely blocks out the wind, which gives kids and beginners a true respite from those deep winter days in Colorado, when the snow can be driven in gusts.
Perhaps even more unique than this lower apron of perfectly-pitched beginner terrain at the bottom of the mountain, however, is the abundance of mellow terrain toward the top of the ski resort. Beginners at many big destination resorts are often limited by how much of the mountain they can see, because the upper stretches of terrain are often reserved for experts.
Beginners and intermediates get used to being locked out of the highest elevations. But Beaver Creek has an outstanding collection of mellow terrain and trails through the top-most sectors of its mountain.
It’s big, it’s high, the views are glorious, and there’s all kinds of hideouts and mini activities to ski through in the woods, including a faux gold mine and a saloon.
Beaver Creek receives snow at a good rate—even for Colorado, averaging 328 inches per year—and it preserves the snow well, as 55% of the ski resort’s terrain faces north. Being on the west side of Vail Pass, the resort tends to squeeze a lot out of passing storms, ranking it in the top 16 for snow overall in North America.
The ski resort is awash in on-mountain lodging, with three different base areas. The western-most of these, Arrowhead Village, is a haven for families seeking a quiet spot that still brings all of the convenience of ski-in, ski-out at a calmer pace than the main village.
Where to eat: The fabulous Grouse Mountain Grill
Where to Stay: Beaver Creek’s Arrowhead Village
10. Winter Park – PAF: 87.26
Perhaps the biggest winner in all of the past years acquisitive machinations within the ski resort world has been Winter Park.
The new ski company that owns Winter Park will presumably include the resort on an umbrella pass that will also feature Aspen, Steamboat, Squaw Valley, Mammoth, and others, which should put Winter Park on the radar of a far wider group of skiers. What the Epic Pass has done for Vail-owned resorts, this pass could do for Winter Park and others.
With or without the destination traffic, Winter Park has always been a skier’s mountain, with a snow profile that ranks it within the elite of North America. At Winter Park 13.4% of days see more than six inches of new snow, and the mountain’s true annual snowfall averages 349 inches.
It has always been a dependable destination for Denver locals who want to avoid much of the tire fire that is I-70 on winter weekends. The road to Winter Park climbs Berthoud Pass, peaking out at 11,307 feet. This once-treacherous rote has recently been made tamer through the labors of backhoes, rock screws and dynamite. Bigger lanes, more lanes, less avalanches; most can agree on these things.
For those who don’t care for driving of any sort, especially that on a ski weekend departing from and returning to Denver, there is a another, more elegant way, to travel to Winter Park.
The ski train harkens from a bygone American era before Henry Ford put a car in front of every house and Dwight Eisenhower built the Interstates, when people commuted, moved, and sought adventure along two steel tracks.
On the weekends, the Amtrak train departs Union Station in central Denver at 7:00 a.m., pulling right up next to the slopes at Winter Park at 9:00 a.m. Those with a lift ticket can simply hop on a chair and get on with it. The train heads back to Denver each weekend day at 4:30 p.m., arriving in Denver at 6:40 p.m.
The train travels through Moffat Tunnel, which was completed in 1928. It travels through and under the rock of the continental divide for 6.2 miles to get from the lee side of the mountains to the West, where the action and the snow are. The ski train is unlike anything else in North America.
In addition to all of that throwback fun, Winter Park’s slopes have a lot to offer, with good stretches of glades and wide groomers as well as a playground of steeper pitches and hucks on the Mary Jane side of the mountain.
Town here will not be mistaken for Steamboat or Park City, but the area around the resort has steadily built up, as has the immediate village around the ski resort, which has been adding lodging and dining options at a good rate for the last 15 years.
Skiers will find Winter Park to be a true destination resort, but one that’s in a quieter corner of Colorado. It’s one of the best places for a big dump in the middle of the week. Laps.
Where to eat: Pepe Osaka’s Fishtaco – this mashup brings the best of many things together.
Where to stay: Zephyr Mountain Lodge – right where skiers need to be.
